Page:The Galaxy, Volume 6.djvu/807

1868.] tory is concerned, if it could be ready for us next week, I doubt if we could find it in us to leave the old mill. We have taken too deep root there, all of us."

The General smiled; his politeness forbade his expressing a doubt of that. As for the rectory, it was foreordained.

"A few thousand dollars, more or less, will not be felt," he said. " We may as well make a complete thing of it when we set about the church. I shall go strong for the rectory, sir," and Marian nodded, as if that point were settled.

If all this were of her suggestion, thought Mr. Angell as he walked homeward, hand in hand with Hannah—the house in which he should conduct worship, the house in which he should dwell—would the integrity of sacred services or the sanctities of home be impaired or violated by the knowledge? He turned from these thoughts to hear Hannah sign her gladness over the joyful day she had spent with Mrs. Clift. But, again and again, they confronted him, until, in desperation, he inquired of the Lord, " Must I quit this field 1" and the answer he received was, " My grace is sufficient for thee."

He told his wife that evening that Mrs. Clift had been proposing to him a school in Belgium for Hannah. That deaf mutes could be taught to speak there, and that she was confident a girl so apt and intelligent would, in a comparatively short space of time, be able to acquire language and use it for conversation, though she should never know the sound of a human voice.

"What for?" asked Lydia, with an abruptness that expressed sufficiently well her failure to understand Mrs. Clift's proposal in a single one of its bearings.

"Perhaps because she is so fond of music herself, and is certain that Hannah's voice would be music."

Mrs. Angell looked at her husband. After a moment's reflection, she said,

"I dare say it is; but Hannah is all music, and—you know, Theodore, it is absurd to talk of such a thing! By the time she had learned to say father and mother, Duncan and his wife would have died of grief waiting for her to come back and say it. And another thing; whom is she to go with? Mrs. Clift?' I don't think I am selfish about it—Hannah is not going."

"Very true," said Mr. Angell, looking well pleased to hear his wife come out in this strong fashion. "I am selfish, though, and I don't see how any one of us could get along without Hannah. Dear silent Hannah, she talks enough for us."

"Yes," said Lydia; "when we have anything to say worth saying, she can join in the conversation and keep up her part very well. She has always thought herself One too Many, or did until you came here. I am sure we should all think there was one too few without her. But—we need not disturb ourselves. Mrs. Clift has merely entertained herself with the notion, I dare say."

"I must show you another of her entertainments, though—one that's likely to give solid evidence of her sincerity," said Mr. Angell, and he produced the designs of the church and rectory which he had brought to show his wife.

"What did I tell you when they first came here!" exclaimed Lydia, with delight. "This is something to the purpose. I knew it would be through them." The rectory, she agreed with her husband, was a matter of small consequence; but the church of the Lord among those Quaker meeting-houses! that was something she had prayed for, and in the prospect she rejoiced.

There were, of course, no more show pieces performed by the quartette choir,